Sunday, August 23, 2015

Prince Charming and I live by ourselves as we have an almost empty nest. The two daughters are married and out living with their own families. However, they DO like to come home as often as they can as does the 5 grandkids....especially the oldest one! She likes to eat!! LOL

Since Prince Charming (PC) built me a new screened in porch this summer, we have eaten almost every single meal out there on this tiny vintage table.

This morning the Blue Ridge Mountains had a chill and we decided to enjoy our coffee inside. This makes me sad because we both dearly love the outdoors and dining alfresco especially in the mornings.

Today PC wasn't feeling good so we decided to not go to church and I was in a cooking mood, putting up the harvest has kept me in the kitchen for far different reasons for several weeks and it was time to put that on the back burner for a few hours and cook!

I have made this dish, Chicken Braised In Milk, before using Jamie Oliver's recipe and I liked it, PC didn't really see the thrill. So I tweaked it to suit both of us, Quite frankly I can now say it is our very favorite way to eat chicken, bar none!

Oh you aren't supposed to take pictures when you serve out of the pot? Ha, I will try to remember that!

The meat is so juicy and fork tender. Seasoned to perfection. The 'curdled sauce' LOL is divine.

I added potatoes to the pot while cooking and they were perfect.

Desert was my Plum Custard Crumb Tart.

Smack Yo Momma!

I have put the best of all plum tart worlds together with this concoction, shortbread crust, custard filling, crumb/struesel topping and the plum slices all in a pretty ring....no ugly pear halves for my special tart!

Even tho I slapped a crumb topping on there I know they are lined up sorta pretty.

Baked to a golden shade of YUMMM.

This crust is Da Bomb.....stays together, just the right degree of flaky and it DID NOT stick!!!!

Slap a little vanilla ice cream for the perfect ala mode and call it dessert!

Tangy/sweet/tart all rolled up in one!

I hope you enjoy my versions of these great dishes.

Chicken Braised in Milk

One Whole Fryer Chicken (WHOLE) 3-6 lbs (Mine was 6.5 lbs)

2-3 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Kosher Salt and Cracked Black Pepper

2 Cups Whole Milk

1 Red Onion, Large & Sliced

Fresh Rosemary Sprigs

Zest of 1 or 2 lemons

5 or 6 whole cloves garlic, peeled

A few shakes of fresh ground nutmeg

Potatoes (If desired)

Place oil in a 5-6 quart dutch oven.

Coat the whole chicken with salt and pepper. Sear on all sides until a beautiful brown color. Makes for great sauce with the pan goo that releases later during cooking.

Once the desired color is reached let the meat rest in Dutch Oven.

Add all the other ingredients, shave a little nutmeg on top.

Add potatoes if desired and add a little salt and pepper to them.

I placed my dutch oven, uncovered, in a 350 degree oven because I wanted to bake my tart at same time. If Making this chicken by itself you can increase the temp to 375.

Bake uncovered, basting the bird and potatoes occasionally for flavor and moisture.

If you start to lose juices you can cover the pot.

Bake until chicken starts to pull away from the leg quarters approximately 1 1/2 hours.

The lemon will cause the milk to separate/curdle and that is a GREAT thing. This makes the most awesome sauce to serve over both the meat and potatoes.

Plum Custard Crumb Tart

Shortbread Crust:

1 stick Butter, cold (I used salted)

1 1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour

1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

1/2 Teaspoon Almond Flavoring

(If you don't care for almond - who doesn't like almond?- you can use vanilla)

the almond flavoring is a perfect combo with the plums because they are both stone fruits

Custard Filling:

3 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar

1 Tablespoon All Purpose Flour

Pinch of Salt

1/2 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream

1 Large Egg

1/2 Teaspoon Almond (or Vanilla) Flavoring

Crumb Topping:

1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour

1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar

3 Tablespoons Cold Butter

1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon

A few shakes of freshly shaved Nutmeg

4-5 large red ripe plums

Preheat oven to 350.

Prepare crust: Stir together dry ingredients and sprinkle flavoring over top. Cut in butter until well mixed but still not together, clumps of butter but evenly mixed. Pat mixture in the bottom and sides of a well buttered 8" tart pan. Bake at 350 until light golden on the edges and slightly puffy. Aprox 15 minutes. Cool before adding custard so it doesn't curdle when it touches the too hot crust.

Prepare the Custard Filling:

Whisk all ingredients together in a medium bowl.

Wash plums, remove seeds and slice in half or 1/3" slices.

Arrange plums in crust.

I like mine sliced and placed in rings around the pan....cause I am OCD enough to do that even tho they are covered with crumb topping!

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Welcome to my blog! I think today is a good day to eat, how about you???

I will start off with a tutorial of the first food I ever made.

Homemade Biscuits!

When I was around 3-4 years old my mom would make biscuits almost every day for our family.

I thought this was the coolest thing to do, ever!

She would let me sit on her lap at the kitchen table where she made them and cut them out for her, then I advanced to cutting and placing them on the pan.

Before long she had me making them all the way to having them ready to go in oven.
By age 7 or 8 I made them all for the family.

If one is going to make biscuits they MUST have cool tools that have been tried and true such as this vintage flour sifter. Would you guys believe I have a friend that I was yardsaling with one day and she did not know what a sifter was??? I still love her!!!

Also you must have the perfect biscuit bowl such as this Pyrex mixing bowl.

And the perfect biscuit pan!!! How sweet is this cast iron pan???

I have to fess up that I have only owned this biscuit pan for maybe 5 years. Any old well seasoned baking will do, just not as much fun to use!

I have lightened up the recipe a little over the years and now use regular whole milk instead of buttermilk like my mom used.

I have to admit that my biscuits are made totally from scratch without a recipe, however, I have made a recipe for them just so I can share with you guys.

How can you understand a dab of this and that over the internet???

So....start with 2 1/2 Cups of Big Spring Mill Self Rising Flour *

6 Tablespoons Butter, very cold

1 Cup Whole or 2% Milk

1-2 teaspoons White Vinegar (optional)

a little more flour for "working" the dough

Sift Flour into a pretty Pyrex Mixing Bowl (just because)

Add vinegar to the cup of milk, if a buttermilk biscuit tang is desired, or use 1 Cup of Buttermilk

cut the cold butter into the flour using a pastry cutter or two butter/case knives until it sorta resembles peas......only not green...lol.....also need to still see chunks of yellow butter, this is what gives you a flaky biscuit!

Add the milk slowly mixing with a fork.....I use the meat fork that came with my set of stainless, perfect size.

Incorporate as much milk as you can, until the dough is sticky/wet, you can and will add more flour. If the stars are not lined up properly the one cup of milk will make the dough soupy, should only be sticky/wet, tho.

Sift extra self rising flour ( 3/4 Cup-ish) out on your counter, table or dough cloth as you see here.....I suggest you have one of these, cleanups are so easy!!

Plop your sticky dough out into the middle of your flour on your cloth.

Start gently incorporating some of the flour around the dough glob as if to coat the outside.

Continue rolling dough over until its no longer sticky. DO NOT OVERWORK your dough!

When your dough ball looks like mine above stop.

Use a rolling pin and gently roll dough out to about 1/2" thickness.

I am showing two of my cutters that I use equally as often. One is an old baking powder can with a couple air holes poked in the bottom. This is approx 2" and the other is an old biscuit cutter that I have had for many years and it's approx 2 1/2" Of course I only make one size at a time except for this tutorial!

I told you I do not usually use a recipe with real measurements and I guesstimate as to how many biscuits I want/need. Today I sorta doubled the recipe and had lots of biscuits of various sizes.